


like autumn leaves, we're in for change

by beardsley



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve and Bucky were fake dating for an undercover assignment and SHIELD erased their memory of it; all they have to go on is a vague sense of something important missing, and all they can do is try to piece together a shared past they can't recall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like autumn leaves, we're in for change

**Author's Note:**

> Massive, *massive* thanks to haipollai for bearing with all of my incessant whining about this story and for deeming it fit for human consumption. Title from TV on the Radio.

'Are you drawing me?'

'Mhm.'

'What for? C'mon, I'm right here. You can have the real thing.'

'Pencils will lasts longer.'

'Hey, I last plenty —'

~

Steve wakes up in the middle of the night, pallid moonlight drenching the bedroom in shades of grey and grey and black. The only thing breaking the silence is the beating of his own heart (slow; steady; even) and the sound of his breathing (in; out; most of the time he wakes up choking on nausea, so this must not have been a nightmare. Except —)

Except there is something off, an odd unease clinging to the roof of his mouth, and Steve sits up. Everything is normal, but nothing is quite right. It feels alien, somehow, like all the furniture has been moved two inches in one direction.

He's on the right side of the bed. He sleeps in the middle, though, taking advantage of the kind of space he didn't have available growing up. Without thinking Steve reaches out to run his hand over the sheets covering the empty space and it should not be surprising that they're cold. (Except.) There is only one pillow, because there is always only one pillow. With a sigh, Steve lies back down.

(Except.)

The next night he wakes up at four in the morning. His hands are freezing and the bed is too —

When it happens a third time, he grabs his pillow and a blanket and goes to sleep on the couch.

~

It's two weeks later that Bucky gets back from his mission in Helsinki and Steve's apartment is where he turns up first, bypassing his own place, rifle case slung over his shoulder. By that time Steve has slept on the couch so often — his own bed has felt wrong so often — that the idea of going back holds little appeal. There is some morbid luck, though, in that Bucky is in pretty bad shape; his right arm is in a sling and there are butterfly stitches over his nose and jaw. He looks bruised and tired and Steve tells himself it isn't a selfish impulse that makes him say:

'Take my bed. You need the rest.'

'Hey, no, I —'

Switching gears, Steve asks, 'How was the op?'

Bucky scowls up at him; oh, he knows exactly what Steve is doing. Subtlety has never been Steve's strongest suit. But Bucky lets the change of subject go, and instead only shrugs.

'Fine,' he says.

'Fine,' Steve echoes. He spares a dubious look at Bucky's sling and Bucky follows his gaze. He shrugs again, scratches the back of his neck, and something about the gesture makes Steve's fingers itch for — he doesn't even know what. (Except. _Except_.) When Bucky bites his lower lip, Steve very carefully forces himself to look away.

Sometimes it's easier to be best friends when they are a few continents apart.

Bucky drops his bag by the couch and moves past Steve to the kitchen. He holds himself in a way Steve thinks is a little guarded, and it makes him wonder how badly Bucky got hurt. It makes him wonder what Bucky is here for, if something happened during the mission to put him in a mood where he'd seek out company. Years and decades and eons ago, back home, he wouldn't need a reason and Steve wouldn't look for one. This isn't back home, though. This is the after, and they're not the same people they were when they (should have) died.

With Bucky there the apartment is less eerie and hollow, at least. Steve hopes the unease that has been trailing him for the past weeks will start dissipating, but he's out of luck on that front. The sounds of Bucky heating up Steve's leftover pizza from yesterday should be comforting and familiar and right, it should be a normalcy reasserting itself and still, despite that, all Steve can feel is a vague sense of _wrongness_.

It isn't until Bucky settles down next to him on the couch and they watch a hockey game, and argue about Bucky's chronic inability to keep himself out of trouble, and the sky outside is heavy and grey with snow and an early winter night — it isn't until then that it hits Steve, a vague sense resolving into a shape of words at the tip of his tongue.

Not wrongness.

Déjà vu.

~

He doesn't know how to talk to Bucky about it; how do you even say, _either I'm going completely insane, someone is gaslighting me or my perceived reality has been warped in a subtle but noticeable way and I'm not sure which of these options is scaring me most_? You don't, that is how.

He doesn't know how to talk to Bucky about it, because it feels like Bucky is part of the problem somehow (because if feels like Bucky might be the problem, because it feels like everything is normal until "except" kicks in the way it always does sooner or later and it's been weeks), but Bucky is not the only person Steve can talk to.

'Not sure what you mean, Steve.'

Sam switches off his binoculars and looks at Steve askance, though there is nothing but friendly concern in his expression. He believes Steve, even if what Steve just told him must have sounded borderline hysterical, and it is such a relief to have someone just _believe_ that Steve is a little embarrassed.

He rubs his face with both hands. 'I know. It doesn't make sense. I just can't — it's weird. Everything is off and I can't even tell how.'

They're perched at the roof of an empty tenement, overlooking the docks with a suspected HYDRA cell lurking in one of the warehouses. It's cold and impersonal, but it's private. You never know who might be listening in, but in the hushed cacophony of a New York night their voiced don't carry far.

'Right,' says Sam. He's frowning. 'Right, okay. We can fix this. Or, I don't know, do something. When did it start?'

'Three weeks ago, three and a half.'

'After you came back from the mission?'

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. Slowly, he turns to Sam. He can feel his heart rate pick up and despite the winter chill all of a sudden he's very warm, and —

'What mission?'

~

He finds the emails not in his own account. That would be too easy. He finds them when he's next at headquarters and sneaks into Sharon's office and logs into her account, for which he is going to be apologetic later. Maybe. If she finds out. If she finds out and is angry, that is, and something tells Steve she might not be. Still, what she doesn't know can't hurt her or her career.

In his own reports there is a quiet spell, some four weeks where the things he supposedly wrote sound…rote. Automatic. He has no memory of writing them. If Steve was in the habit of backreading his own reports, he'd have noticed a lot sooner that something was wrong.

In the reports he can access with Sharon's level of security clearance, the quiet four weeks are not quiet at all. Reading through them is like reading fiction: people Steve supposedly trailed or investigated but never heard of, doesn't remember, and he feels nothing. There is no spark of recognition, not even the sense of déjà vu, not until —

Week one, day four, daily check in and, _Agent Barnes arrived safely; cover established_.

That's all there is and Steve can't remember and he feels sick and he knows, he _knows_ , that something must have gone wrong during that mission. Something must have gone wrong to warrant memory alteration, there is something —

'— we're missing,' Bucky announces that same afternoon as he kicks the door to Steve's apartment closed. He looks mighty pissed off (still bruised, though not as exhausted; still hurt) and Steve spent the afternoon pacing, trying to think of a way to tell Bucky that their own people apparently fucked them over again, as seems to be their wont. He breathes out. He says:

'I know.'

Bucky blinks, wind going out of his sails. 'You — do?'

'Printed some reports.' Steve nods towards the coffee table and the papers scattered all over it. He has an idea now of four weeks in Paris where they were supposed to be undercover. There are not enough details, of course, not nearly enough to trigger any recollection of the events he'd vaguely described. 'Have a look.'

It doesn't take long for Bucky to go through the reports, including those signed with his own name. His shoulders get more and more tense as he reads; his head is bowed and the back of his neck is pale and vulnerable (like a man at the guillotine, waiting for the axe to fall) and once again Steve's fingers itch to do something. Anything. Everything, maybe, and isn't that a terrifying thought?

He shakes himself like a wet dog and joins Bucky on the couch, careful to keep some distance between them.

'Do you remember any of it?' Steve asks eventually, when it seems Bucky is content to just fume in silence.

'Not a goddamn thing.' His voice doesn't shake, not quite, but there is a rough edge of panic to it. Just because he can't remember this particular mission does not mean he has no memory of all the other times his mind was wiped and wiped and wiped again. Steve only sees the tremor in his flesh-and-blood hand because he's looking for it. He fists his own hands on his thighs to keep from reaching out.

'They brainwashed us,' Bucky says. 'They fucking —' With a choked back noise he drops back against the couch, presses his palms against his eyes.

'We must've consented,' says Steve. It sounds dull to his own ears, neither convincing nor encouraging.

Bucky turns to scowl at him. 'Why? Because SHIELD have such an excellent track record of not fucking with people's heads? Because they're the good guys? Do you seriously think I would agree to someone, to _anyone_ , cutting into my brain again?'

He is right. He is right and he's right to be angry, too. It's the same anger that turns Steve's blood to ice, freezing and still. For himself, because he can't imagine there is anything that would make him want SHIELD to tinker with his memories when memories are everything he has of his life back home. Mostly for Bucky, though. Christ, he's much angrier for Bucky than he is for himself.

'Ever since we came back,' he says, staring at the blank screen of the television, 'I can't sleep in my own bed. Everything is wrong. Off. Don't know why.'

After a moment, 'Yeah,' Bucky whispers. 'Me too. Thought I was going insane, like I forgot something important and knew I forgot, but didn't know what it was. Still don't.' When Steve looks at him again, the corner of his mouth is lifted in a faint smirk. 'It feels better to know that if I'm finally going nuts, at least I'm taking you with me.'

Steve laughs. 'Right, like I'd let you.'

'You mean let me go nuts, or let me drag you down?'

Both. Either. It's — Steve swallows compulsively around an emotion he can't name. It's an itch, an impulse, and he wants — he doesn't know what he wants. (No, he does, but it's the one thing he can't have.) He says nothing, and the silence stretches into an uncomfortable one until Bucky breaks it again.

'Something happened. Something's gotta have happened. Either they planned to fuck us over from the start, or the mission went so fubar they had to. In any case —'

'In any case, they fucked us over.'

Another pause and then Bucky breathes out, shoulders hunching. He's gone pale enough that the fading bruises on his face and neck stand out sharply. When he hauls himself off the couch his t-shirt rides up just a little, exposing a pale sliver of skin, and Steve watches him stretch his arms over his head.

'I need a fucking drink,' says Bucky. 'Or ten.'

Steve sighs. 'Beer in the fridge, gin in the cupboard above —'

'I know where you keep your booze, Rogers.'

'Course you do.'

Tapping the side of his nose, Bucky grins. It almost reaches his eyes.

~

There is a post-it note stuck to the inside of Steve's laptop lid, and he finds it so late because he much prefers touch screens — most of the time he just steals Bucky's tablet or his own magical multipurpose smartphone if he needs to get online. The laptop stays shut off on the kitchen table, propping up files and coffee mugs.

Steve recognises his own handwriting, even if the note itself is a mystery. It reads:

_23 january. it was real_

~

'Are you drawing me?'

'Mhm.'

'What for? C'mon, I'm right here. You can have —'

~

The next time Steve gets a call from Nick Fury, he lets it go to voicemail.

~

Sharon meets him on the helipad, where their presence won't raise many questions and the howling wind will drown out the conversation. When Sharon sees him, she only needs to take one look at his expression. She hands him a paper coffee cup and waits.

On any other occasion, Steve would try to be more circumspect. As it is he still feels nauseous when he thinks about the unhappy, _betrayed_ twist of Bucky's mouth and Sharon is the only person in this entire organisation Steve knows he can trust. He asks, 'How much do you know about memory manipulation?'

'It's sick,' she says, not even thinking about it. She wraps herself tighter in her jacket. 'It's a violation. They'll tell you it's for the greater good, but that is such bullshit. Why?' Again: she only needs to take one look at his expression, and her own falls. 'Oh, god. Our people?'

Steve looks down at the city below them. 'I found records from the procedure. Found the pre-procedure interview, too.' In the video he looked sick and drawn and determined, but he clearly gave consent and confirmed prior knowledge that the memory alteration would be taking place. It was odd, watching himself like that, and a part of Steve prayed that a physical reminder would be enough to trigger some recollection.

He didn't let himself be disappointed when nothing happened.

'What did they take?' Sharon asks.

'The last mission. I think.'

'The undercover gig in Paris?' She cringes when Steve looks at her, hopeful for a blessed second before she shakes her head. 'All I know is what you told me about it. I'm sorry. You were there with Bucky, though, right?'

'He doesn't remember either.'

'Yeah, no. He wouldn't. Look, I can try to find something out — there's got to be some files or reports I could wrangle access to.'

Steve should say no. He should say no and he should not ask one of his best friends to put him above her career; it's childish, and he can deal with his own problems. Something stops him. (God, he's so selfish it's a damn disgrace.) He nearly jumps when Sharon steps closer until their shoulders are touching.

'They screw with your head once,' she says, low, 'and it never goes away. You don't know, not for sure, if they just took one memory or one mission or one day. You don't know for sure if you're who you think you are, because what if they erased something that _made_ you and you don't even realise it's missing? Hell, what if they _added_ something? And you won't ever know. Not for sure.'

Steve doesn't need to ask if she's speaking from experience. 'Sharon…'

She smiles at him tightly. 'Think for yourself and question authority. I'll keep in touch, okay?'

~

She keeps her promise, except ( _except_ ) Steve finds some of his own answers first.

Even after spending the whole day with Sam at the community centre where they both volunteer their weekends, he's hyper and jittery and can't settle down. He would drag Bucky to the gym for a long, gruelling spar, but Bucky took his bike to chase after something that could be a clue. He hasn't volunteered information about his contact network, and Steve never asked.

The apartment is hollow and solitary even with all the lights turned on, even with the television blaring a mind-numbing quiz show in the background. There are empty takeout boxes on the floor next to the couch and books he had started reading only to abandon them halfway through when he couldn't concentrate on any of the words. The place looks lived in, it looks familiar.

It looks wrong.

Steve throws himself on the couch and grabs the sketchbook tucked underneath the coffee table, its pages dog-eared and stained with tea and coffee. Not his best or most tidy work, but he has no plans of sharing it with anyone other than friends, maybe. Maybe. The pencil is stuck between pages and Steve flips through them on automatic. He has no idea what he wants to get down on paper, or if there even is a way of translating the white noise in his head into something that is not just…more white noise.

(Still life, maybe, or easy and straightforward architecture. His sketches of people tend to be faceless, which in retrospect is kind of morbid.)

Except —

He stops on the last inked page; no, not inked yet. Just pencils, firm enough that the lines look nearly black. Déjà vu hits Steve like a punch in the gut, sick and nauseating, but it's déjà vu followed only by hollowness; he doesn't even remember remembering, he just knows he _should_. He has no memory of the sketch. He has no memory of —

The lines are firm but not austere, sure in a way that means he must have drawn from life and not fantasy. And oh, what a fantasy this would have been.

It's Bucky. Of course it's Bucky; he has been a mainstay in Steve's sketchbooks for as long as they have known each other. On page he is in bed, hair a mess and the sheets tangled around his hips, tank top riding up to show a few inches of fragile skin and just a hint of hair trailing downwards. His flesh-and-blood hand is stretched out, fingers curling in a gesture that looks almost like he's beckoning Steve. It isn't the pose that fazes Steve, though. It's Bucky's expression, because —

('Are you drawing me?'

'Mhm.'

'What for? C'mon, I'm right here. You can have the real thing.')

Because he is looking straight ahead, must have been looking at Steve as he'd been drawing, and his eyes are soft and gently amused. His mouth quirks in a smile that, for once, has no cockiness left for show. It's a knowing smile, an intimate smile, the kind Steve has never seen directed at himself or anyone else. (But that is not true, is it? Just because he can't remember —) Bucky looks perfectly at ease in bed with Steve drawing him, perfectly happy to indulge Steve, perfectly _happy_.

There is a date in the bottom right corner: 23/01.

23rd January, and with a rush of sudden understanding Steve finally gets what the note meant, the one he left for himself: _it was real_.

This is what he was missing, and once the piece slides into place it's like a switch being turned on and Steve — gets it. Jesus. He gets it. This is what he is missing.

This is what was taken.

For a moment he actually wonders if he should tell Bucky. He still doesn't have all the information and a small, selfish part of him wants to keep the knowledge of what must have happened to himself — close to his chest, untainted with actual memory, free to be the fantasy he needs it to be to stay sane. Except, except.

They have both been lied to enough, and Steve remembers vividly the visceral edge of panic to Bucky's voice at the realisation that he'd been manipulated and his memories had been tinkered with. Not by the enemy this time, either, but by the organisation that is nominally on their side. After everything Steve knows he owes Bucky the truth, or what he thinks is the truth. (Thinks, and only ever that; there is no gut feeling or unexpected flash of memory, just an empty void where weeks he'd spent in Paris with Bucky should be.)

The email from Sharon comes as he's shrugging into his jacket, the sketch tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. At the soft ping from the kitchen, Steve stops with the keys in the lock.

_Friendly sources say it was a sting job. There's a smuggling ring dealing in art stolen by Allied and Axis soldiers from Nazi occupied territories. The Paris cell supposedly has ties to modern HYDRA. You & B. went in as black market dealers. SHIELD needed access to records re: possible war crimes and you agreeing to the mindwipe was part of the deal with some foreign governments. Also apparently you were pretending to be a couple to lend credibility to your story, not sure about that part but will get back to you._

~

Bucky's apartment is cold, a little impersonal, a little too empty to really be a home. From the few personal items, the tidiness and kitchen that looks barely used Steve doesn't even have to wonder whether Bucky spends a lot of time at his own place; he knows, and the knowledge settles like ice in the pit of his stomach.

They sit at the opposite ends of the kitchen table under harsh orange light. It makes Bucky look almost sick, too pale, the shadows under his eyes too pronounced. His left arm on the table is still, and it is in stark contrast to the way a fine tremor runs through his flesh-and-blood hand. His fingers curl around the edge of the sketch like he's not sure if he wants to be touching it or not.

Steve has no idea what he was expecting when he came here to tell Bucky what he'd found out, but he guesses "any reaction" would probably be somewhere high on the list. As it is, Bucky is almost too blank.

'So.' Steve clears his throat. 'That's it. What we've been missing.'

They had some kind of secret tryst during an undercover mission and it would be funny, absolutely hilarious, were it not for the fact that neither of them feels like laughing.

'Hell of a thing to miss,' Bucky mutters. He lifts his gaze to Steve just for a second before looking away, jaw tense. 'Still don't remember anything. I feel like I should. Like there should be some kind of trigger and, I don't know, something. Anything.'

'Yeah, I know what you mean.'

Bucky's shoulders slump in defeat. He traces the tips of his fingers over the sketch, and Steve finds that he can't read his expression at all. There is a kind of aching in it he's never seen before; he doesn't know what to do with it.

'At least we agreed,' he says to fill the silence hanging between them like an axe. 'Doesn't make it better, but it's something.'

'Right, so they brainwashed us, but at least were nice enough to warn us in advance.' Bucky barks out an incredulous laugh, sudden enough that it makes Steve twitch in surprise. 'Christ. This is who we work for. Ends justifying means taken to some sick, twisted extreme. Guess there really are no good guys left in this brave new world, eh?'

 _Good isn't always nice_ , Steve almost says, but he bites his tongue. They both know that and Bucky of all people must know that there is no objective good or bad, just loyalty to the people you believe in and whatever it is they stand for. That's the question, though, isn't it? Do they believe in the people they work for?

'Are you going to quit?' he asks.

(It's easier, he thinks, to focus on the blame and anger than to talk about what he would really like to talk about, but of course he doesn't want to talk about that, not really. If he doesn't, he can pretend it might have been something it wasn't — it stays unspoken and so it stays real, because Bucky can't say, _no, actually, you might have a crush but for me it was just a mission_.)

Bucky shrugs. 'Yeah, you know I can't do that. If I stopped playing ball, they'd extradite me to Siberia faster than you could say _gulag_.'

'Hey, I can say that pretty fast.'

It makes Bucky laugh again, and Steve smiles. The look Bucky gives him is impossibly fond. For a moment everything is easy, but then Bucky catches himself and the mask slips. Maybe he's waiting for that flash of memory that doesn't come, the one Steve keeps holding out hope for no matter how many times he feels nothing, and nothing, and nothing.

'Listen, I…' Bucky clears his throat, rakes his fingers through his hair. He sighs. 'I gotta figure out what to do with this and — and SHIELD screwing with my head, everything. I'm not gonna run away again, but I think maybe I need —'

'To be alone for a while?' Steve finishes for him, and Bucky shrugs. 'Yeah. We could both probably use some time off.'

He doesn't expect Bucky to leave right that instant, but bites his tongue and puts up no fight when Bucky does get up. The screech of the chair legs across the floor is deafening and Steve wonders, because he can't not wonder, if this — a shared memory they don't have — will be the final straw to push them apart once and for all, the way death and brainwashing and murder couldn't, because now Bucky will always associate him with yet another betrayal; yet another manipulation tactic.

As if reading Steve's mind, Bucky pauses and shifts from foot to foot. 'We'll be okay, though, right?' he asks, visibly anxious, eyes a little wide in something like fear.

Steve makes himself smile. 'Yeah,' he says. (Yeah, he's been stupid in love with the man before him for decades, but he's good at fronting and they will be okay; they will be just fine if Bucky lets them.) 'We're like cats, you and me. Always land on our feet.'

He watches Bucky pull on his jacket, grab the bike keys, and catches the apartment keys one-handed when Bucky throws them over his shoulder. The silence isn't uncomfortable, and every once in a while Bucky's eyes stray to Steve and to the kitchen table, the sketch still laid out on it. Pulled by a nervous energy Steve recognises from the war, he only stops when he's about to walk out the front door.

He's turned away, but Steve can see heat crawling up the back of his neck as he says, 'Though I guess the fake couple part explains why I'd agree to someone fucking with my memories again. I probably thought if that was my only chance at, y'know, then it'd be worth it. Even if I wouldn't remember afterwards.'

'Only chance at what?' Steve asks.

Bucky finally turns to look at him. His expression is pure misery, his smile unhappy and self-deprecating.

'You,' he says.

It takes an impossibly long moment for Steve to _think_ , but before he even has a chance to react Bucky's smile goes a little pained — as if whatever it is he sees in Steve's face must be all he needs to know, as if it tells him everything — and just like that, he leaves. He closes the door quietly behind himself and standing alone in the hallway, staring mutely with his heart somewhere in his throat, Steve feels like someone just yanked the ground from under his feet.

~

Bucky said he's not running away, not again, and all Steve can do is trust him. He waits.

Days pass and he tries to process the information he'd been given, readjust his reality to accommodate two new puzzle pieces: that he was in a maybe-fake, maybe-real relationship, and that Bucky apparently had wanted something like it for…however long. He has no idea what to do with it. It would be easier if Bucky wasn't so perfectly damn cagey and vague.

Days pass and still no memory comes resurfacing and Steve waits.

He waits.

He —

He wakes up in the middle of the night and now he knows why the bed feels so empty. It's — amazing, terrifying, funny except not at all — how quickly he had gotten used to not sleeping alone and how desperately he misses it even though he has no way of remembering what _it_ is. He has no idea what it would feel like to have Bucky next to him, no idea how it would feel like to indulge in any of the fantasies he's harboured for years.

A childish part of Steve is jealous of himself; he got to feel it all, and he'll never get it back.

'You're not going to fix anything by moping,' Sam tells him. It's been over a week.

Steve sets his jaw and glares at the television screen. They're supposed to be watching baseball, but he can't really focus on the game in front of him. He's not sure which teams are even playing, much less who might be winning. 'I'm not moping,' he says.

At that Sam just gives him a look.

'Fine,' Steve amends. 'Fine, all right. I'm moping.'

Sam nods sagely. 'Good. Admitting it is the first step towards recovery.'

'You're hilarious.'

'You're both losers and so is Barnes,' says Sharon, appearing in the kitchen doorway. She is holding two bags of popcorn and has a bottle of coke tucked under one arm. 'Now shove over, we're watching the game. Everything will be okay. Kid's gonna come back to you.'

'Kid, really? He could be your grandfather,' Steve says as he obediently makes space for Sharon to sit next to him on the couch.

She snorts. 'He has the emotional maturity of a starfish.'

After a beat, 'You're not wrong,' Steve admits.

~

He wants to give Bucky time. He wants to back off and not be a nag, like any sane person. He keeps the sketch in his bedside drawer under a dogeared copy of _Slaughterhouse-Five_ and only looks at it when he wakes up cold and disoriented and it's that or going running in the middle of the night, exhaustion as good an invitation for dreamless sleep as any.

The call comes in on a Wednesday and Steve doesn't recognise the number — then, he barely recognises Bucky's voice on the other end of the line through the static and noise, and the occasional burst of gunfire.

'Steve?' His breathing is uneven; he sounds winded. He sounds —

Switching to loudspeaker, Steve doesn't even think about it. He just starts moving, grabs for his gun and his bike keys and the nearest sweatshirt. Bucky's tone of voice is familiar and it sends cold shivers down his spine. There is a particular way people talk when they're injured badly and Steve can recognise it all too well.

'I'm here. Where are you?'

'Did some stupid things,' Bucky says, strained as if he's talking through gritted teeth. 'Think I'm gonna need some backup here.'

'Where are you?' Steve asks again, more urgently this time. He's tying his boots one-handed.

There is a short pause and only the noise of Bucky breathing before, 'No fucking clue,' he says, and he sounds so small and angry and miserable at the same time that Steve barely has the mind to lock the door behind himself and he's bounding down the stairs, four at a time. 'Track me? GPS in my arm should still work, look, they're gonna catch up to me soon — ow. Shit. _Shit_.'

The line goes dead.

'Shit,' Steve echoes. He's dialing Sam's number in the same breath he gets the bike started.

~

The GPS in Bucky's arm does work, and Steve almost chokes on relief when the flashing red dot gives him a position right outside Boston and not in the middle of nowhere in the Russian tundra. Small mercies. He speeds down the interstate with Sam on air support above and ahead of him, and the only parts of his costume he'd bothered to put on save for the wings are goggles.

They make it in record time and still Steve's heart is in his throat as he glances from the rain-slicked road ahead to the GPS screen, waiting for the signal to cut out.

It doesn't, though. The coordinates take them to a dockside warehouse that looks abandoned, but the thermal cameras and retinal scan lock on the entrance door tell a different story.

'No records of this place being used as a front for any of our usual players,' says Sam, scrolling through some files on his tablet. He and Steve are lurking behind a storage container, waiting for some sign of activity. There is nothing, not even guards, at least not in plain sight. 'Definitely not HYDRA. Mob, maybe?'

'Maybe. Does it matter?'

Sam grins at him. 'Nah, not really. You want to take the front or back?'

'Front,' says Steve. He unholsters his gun and uncocks the safety. The shield is a familiar, comforting weight in his other hand. 'Cover the exits?'

'Will do. All right, let's rescue this idiot.'

It doesn't take long. The warehouse has only a skeleton staff, armed with semi-autos but otherwise low-tech, no insignia or distinguishable uniforms. Steve cares very little who he's fighting. He runs on adrenaline and anger and sheer momentum and within five minutes the ground floor of the warehouse explodes in gunfire and screaming. Somewhere at the back upstairs there is a commotion, too. The thought of Sam armed with nothing but his wings, easily weaponised with all their razor sharp edges, makes Steve smile.

He makes his way across the warehouse quickly but methodically, dodging bullets all but one time when he feels his sweatshirt tear as the shot grazes his left arm. He responds in kind and the man who'd shot him ends up sprawled on the floor, moaning in pain, clutching at his abdomen.

'You'll live. Takes hours to bleed out from this kinda thing,' Steve tells him. 'Longer if you don't move. Where is the prisoner?'

'Fuck you, man —'

Steve presses his boot against the wound, over the man's already bloody knuckles, and grinds down. The man _shrieks_.

'Where,' Steve repeats, 'is he?'

The sobbed directions are enough: basement level, hidden staircase. Steve taps his earpiece to update Sam, and in return Sam tells him he's made it to the control room. Even before he's done speaking the lights go out as he cuts off electricity. There is an eerie silence, followed by the low hum of backup generators, and then everything is drenched in green and red emergency lights.

'Right, the staircase is on your six, I'm disabling the security locks…now. Go get him. I'll take care of the rest of these jokers.'

When Steve finally gets to the basement, the sight of Bucky almost makes him wish he'd killed every person that stood in his way instead of limiting himself to nonlethal injuries, but he knows it's just the anger talking — not even at these people, whoever they are, or at Bucky for getting himself into shit again, but at SHIELD. Bucky wouldn't have gone off the reservation looking for trouble without the whole damn mindwipe business. And he's —

He's a mess. They've got him cuffed to the floor, kneeling and blindfolded with his arms tied behind his back. There's blood all over the front of his shirt. His shoulders tense and his jaw sets when he hears the door opening.

'It's me,' Steve says, trying for nonchalant instead of weak with relief.

'Steve.' Bucky says his name like it's a blessing, or a prayer. He flinches when Steve kneels down next to him, but doesn't protest when Steve pushes up the blindfold; he just blinks owlishly, eyes hazy and tired. His pupils are blown. Drugs, probably. 'Hey. You came.'

'Somebody's got to rescue your sorry ass.'

There is a loud bang upstairs. Steve ignores it. He helps Bucky get out of the cuffs and strips out of his sweatshirt, dirty and bloodied as it is, to throw it over Bucky's shoulders. In the end he takes most of his weight when it turns out that walking in a straight line is a little beyond Bucky at the moment. He winces when Steve touches his flesh-and-blood arm, but only shakes his head at Steve's worried look.

By the time they make it out of the warehouse Steve is more or less dragging him along. It's still raining and Steve's t-shirt gets immediately soaked as soon as they step out in the open air, but he doesn't care. Sam is waiting next to the motorbike, and all traces of good humour disappear from his expression when he sees the state Bucky is in.

'So I found some shipping manifests and a tonne of paperwork, and apparently we just took down a weapons smuggling ring,' he says. At Bucky's tired nod of confirmation, Sam's mouth twists in open sympathy. 'Hey, kid. You alive in there?'

'Had worse,' Bucky mutters, leaning against Steve's side. 'Crap. Think I'm gonna be sick.'

He isn't in any shape to be driving back to New York and the last thing he needs is to get pneumonia from being out in a downpour while coming off whatever drugs he'd been given, so Steve makes the executive decision to find the closest motel along the interstate. Sam agrees to fly ahead and let Sharon know what happened only after Steve swears up and down that he and Bucky will be fine on their own for a night.

~

Steve is shivering from the cold and the rain when they get to their room, and starts peeling off his soaked-through shirt as soon as the door is closed. It sticks to his skin, heavy and wet, and Steve knows he must look pathetic and ridiculous as he fights to get it off. The small noise from the other side of the room makes him stop with his arms still over his head. Bucky is staring at him, shoulders hunched, small in the sweatshirt that is two sizes too big for him.

Swallowing, Steve lowers his arms. The wet t-shirt drops to the floor. He can feel heat spilling over his face; suddenly, he is very aware of the weeks he's missing. They must have done this, or something like it, or at least Bucky must have seen him naked countless times and god, Steve can't be thinking about this.

They need to talk. They need to talk about this whole thing and where they're gonna go from here. If Bucky is ready to come home.

Instead, Steve swallows again and says: 'I can go change in the bathroom, if you want me to.'

'I don't want you to.' Bucky's eyes are fixed somewhere on the floor and he sticks his hands deep in the pockets of Steve's sweatshirt. 'Do you want to?'

Steve shakes his head. It's like they're having a conversation where neither of them is willing to actually say anything and what Steve really wants to say is, 'I want _you_ ,' but he settles on a vague protest. He goes to the bathroom anyway, in the end, to get the first aid kit.

The bruises and cuts are a shield, a buffer. He and Bucky end up sitting on the bed, face to face, and it would be unbearably intimate were it not for Bucky hissing in pain every now and again. At least the drugs have worn off; there are dark shadows under his eyes but his gaze is clear and lucid. It's quiet, though not uncomfortable. They have done this so many times before, in the trenches and not, patching each other up like it's the only language they need: silence and contact and something like comfort.

Taping Bucky's ribs is routine by this point in their long, long lives. There is a jagged cut low on Bucky's abdomen, the exact same place Steve had shot one of the guards at the warehouse. He stitches it up slowly and carefully. His hands don't shake when he's pressing a makeshift dressing against Bucky's skin and for the first time in as long as he can remember Bucky is warmer to the touch than he is.

It's routine, and Steve stops thinking. The touch on his wrist makes him jump. He lifts his eyes to Bucky's face just to see him nod at Steve's left arm.

'You're bleeding.'

'It'll be gone by morning,' Steve says automatically. The pain has subsided to an itch and he knows in a few hours it will be completely healed. He rarely even needs stitches these days.

Bucky smiles. 'Yeah, I know. Let me take a look?'

He doesn't wait for a reply, just tugs Steve closer, the fingers of his left hand curling around Steve's biceps. The metal is almost as warm as the rest of him. It's — too much, almost. Steve can feel his heart start racing. He has no idea what Bucky is doing except maybe, somehow, testing him. Trying to push. If he expects Steve to pull away, though, he's gonna be waiting a long-ass time.

And maybe something of that shows in Steve's expression. There is a moment. There is a moment where —

'Steve —'

'I remember,' he says, barely above a whisper. It might as well be a bomb going off in the silence of the motel room. Bucky's eyes go wide, his grip on Steve's arm tight enough that it borders on painful. It's now or never, Steve knows, they are either going to make it through or they will crash and burn but at the very least they will crash and burn together. 'Just one thing. I keep having this dream about — about us. About the mission, though it's just us. I'm drawing you, and you tell me I could have the real thing.'

Bucky looks at him like he doesn't know if Steve is serious, and like he doesn't want to know. His voice is steady. 'You could.'

They're inches apart, the room and the bed both small and faraway. The only thing Steve can focus on is the roar of blood in his ears and Bucky's eyes on him, wide and bright and almost pleading. Still, despite everything — still a part of Steve insists that this feels right. He might have no memory of ever actually touching Bucky like this but it happened, and he has to trust his own past judgement.

They are inches apart and as Steve closes the distance between them Bucky meets him in the middle. 'It wasn't real,' he murmurs, right against Steve's lips. 'It was just a mission, Steve. Didn't mean anything. You don't —'

'I do,' he interrupts ( _I do, I always have_ ). He reaches out and presses one hand over Bucky's heart, palm flat and fingers splayed and Bucky breathes in sharply, moves an imperceptible inch closer. 'Tell me it doesn't mean anything. Look me in the eye and tell me it doesn't feel real.'

'Jesus, Steve —'

'Tell me.'

Bucky doesn't, though, he has always been a contrary bastard. He only lets out a soft, angry noise that goes through Steve like a thousand volts; he only grabs Steve by the back of the neck and pulls him in, finally, finally. The kiss is too harsh to really be any good and still Steve's breathing hitches on a choked-back moan. Bucky's fingers on his arm send sparks of electricity down his spine and he licks into Bucky's mouth with single minded purpose — and he doesn't think that this isn't even a first kiss, he doesn't.

(He does. He can't stop himself from wondering what it was like then, how did it start, who pushed first and who pushed back and how it felt to really, _really_ be kissing for the first time.)

It's easy. They have been trying to crawl into each other's skins since years and years ago and now Bucky fits himself against Steve, his left hand already warm to the touch now nearly scalding when he hooks his fingers into the waistband of Steve's jeans. His knuckles rub idly, or maybe on purpose, low against Steve's abdomen and Steve lets out a pathetically needy noise.

He kisses Bucky until the desperation seeps out of his every touch, until he can taste more than rain and longing and ache. Underneath it all Bucky is just as warm and solid, just as alive, as he should be.

When Steve pulls back it's only far enough to breathe. Bucky's eyes are fever-bright and he is flushed all the way down his collar bone and it's the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen.

'That real enough for you?' he asks, hoarse.

Bucky swallows compulsively before he tries to speak. 'I — yeah. You mean it. You really…?'

Instead of replying, Steve just presses another kiss to the corner of Bucky's mouth. This time is easier than the first, and it's just as good.

'You never said anything,' Bucky murmurs. But he's not pulling away; the opposite. He runs his fingers through Steve's hair and it's all Steve can do to keep himself from outright purring, then again when Bucky's hand fists in the chain of Steve's dog tags.

'Neither did you.'

Bucky rubs his knuckles up and down his stomach again and there is no way it's unconscious. Just as deliberately, Steve smooths his hands down Bucky's sides over the tape, the patchwork of bruises and cuts.

'I don't even have dreams,' Bucky says. 'There's nothing. I really wish I could remember.'

'It's all right. Remember this. Now.'

The smile Bucky gives him is nothing short of heartrending, a small broken thing with jagged edges made of equal parts warmth and resignation. Without waiting for an invitation he chases Steve's mouth again and this kiss is all different, all heat but no hurry.

Except when Steve's hands stray lower over Bucky's hips, the noise Bucky makes is not appreciative and he twists away, wincing in pain. Steve is off him in an instant.

'Ow, Christ,' Bucky manages. He reaches down to press his fingers lightly to the dressing over the wound on his stomach, and a patch of red seeps through the fabric. 'Shit.'

Steve can't help it; he laughs, then laughs harder when Bucky throws him a betrayed glare. He rests his head against Bucky's shoulder after a moment Bucky just sighs, forlorn and put upon.

'Raincheck?'

'Raincheck,' Steve agrees. They have all the time in the world, after all, and Steve plans to take advantage of every moment even if it's just to wrap himself around Bucky and pull him to bed.

Bucky lets him, is the amazing thing; he lets Steve gently manhandle him until they're lying on their sides and the motel room is quiet. Steve falls asleep with his mouth pressed to the back of Bucky's neck, just below the hairline. He falls asleep with Bucky's cold feet pressed to his shins. For the first time in weeks, for the first time in a too long time, the bed Steve is curled up in doesn't feel alien or wrong and there is nothing missing.

~

For the first time in a too long time it isn't unease and an eerie familiarity that wakes Steve up. It's Bucky. The mattress dips as he moves to sit on the edge of the bed and without turning on any lights he reaches for the standard-issue motel notepad in the drawer. Steve rubs the sleep out of his eyes and watches Bucky write for a long moment, until the silence is broken by Bucky's whisper:

'Your name is Bucky Barnes. You're in Boston. It's…' He glances at the alarm clock, the time blinking bright red. 'It's four in the morning. Your name —'

'Buck?'

He jerks back in surprise, turning to Steve. The room is too dark for Steve to properly see his expression.

'Hey,' Bucky says. 'Hi. Sorry, didn't mean to wake you.'

'It's all right.' Steve shifts until he's closer. He gets up to sit cross-legged next to Bucky. When Bucky doesn't protest or flinch or project any kind of discomfort, Steve carefully wraps his arms around him from behind, hands coming to rest over Bucky's stomach. 'Are _you_ all right?'

'Yeah. Just…' He tips his head back against Steve's shoulder. 'I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose this.'

'You won't.'

'How can you know that? Push comes to shove and we're disposable, or at least our memories are.'

There is nothing Steve can say to that. Bucky is probably right. The people they work with — the people they work _for_ — rarely have any compunctions about manipulating their own allies, with or without their prior knowledge, and the idea of them screwing with his memories again makes something cold settle in the pit of Steve's stomach. Bucky rubs his thumb over Steve's wrist and it isn't fair that he is the one to offer reassurance, when he's also the one who needs to repeat his own name like a mantra so it doesn't escape him again.

Without thinking, Steve says the first thing that comes to his mind, which is: 'Let's go somewhere.'

'We are not eloping,' Bucky tells him flatly.

'Then let's go on a road trip. Remember you said once you wanted to see the Grand Canyon after the war ended?'

That surprises a laugh out of Bucky, a little hoarse and a little unhappy. 'Jesus, you remember that?'

'Let's go to the Grand Canyon,' Steve says. He knows how it must sound: desperate and selfish. He doesn't, actually, care.

He knows Bucky is probably just humouring him when he says, 'Yeah. Yeah, all right.'

~

'Are you drawing me?'

Steve blinks, tearing his eyes away from the sketchbook. Sprawled on the couch with the game controller between his knees, Bucky is looking up at him with an odd expression lurking somewhere in the curve of his mouth. The bruises are all healed for now, though he's sporting a long cut along his right biceps where he got caught on a wire fence while running away from (for once away from and not towards) yet another firefight.

Steve had found himself reaching for a pencil on automatic.

It's déjà vu all over again, except —

Except this time Steve puts down the sketchbook and stops looking at Bucky like an artist would. He stops looking and lets himself _watch_ , and lets everything he sees show in his expression. It works. Bucky swallows, eyes going dark, and he bites his lower lip. If they really are on borrowed time, Steve wants to make the most of every second.

He says, 'Maybe later. I like the real you better.'


End file.
